


All of the Valyrian steel

by gossamerempire



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossamerempire/pseuds/gossamerempire





	All of the Valyrian steel

When they come for her, she does not buckle.

When the metallic spray of blood anoints her cheek (he is not her son but he is someone’s son, and the cost is always someone’s child), she does not flinch.

When they advance towards her, without honour and without mercy, she does not whimper.

She wonders if those that have measured her as feeble, and dismissed her ancestry as akin to her health, have half of her nerve. But in her final moments she knows, she bitterly knows, that all of the Valyrian steel in the Seven Kingdoms cannot quite compare to the courage that she has clawed for herself.

Perhaps this is what valour boils down to: grim and exhausted acceptance of one’s fortune in life (no matter how undeserved).

The Prince of Dragonstone has given the Mountain time. Ser Gregor Clegane ruins Elia Martell of Dorne slowly, with the languid assurance of a man that knows that Rhaegar Targaryen has abandoned his wife and children to be savaged by fate.

In the end, she dies without ceremony, swindled out of being a Queen.

In the end, history cloaks her in pity, because her husband was merely fond of her, and little else.

And in the end, she is robbed of the luxury of murmuring anything at all, let alone a name, with her last breath.


End file.
